“In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."

-Baba Dioum, Senegalese ecologist, Speech 1968

Although water is all around us, we take it for granted that there will be plenty of good, clean water for us to drink, use for irrigation and oh yeah! for the fish and bugs in our rivers, lakes and wetlands. Our watersheds face a great deal of pressures from urban development and land uses that have increased the amount of impervious surfaces, interrupted the natural flow of water and increased the kinds and amounts of pollutants reaching our streams. But all is not lost and there are a great deal of opportunities on our horizons to learn from other watershed experiences and make positive changes in our development and land management practices that can help us continue to improve our quality of life.

This website is designed to provide information about the Aux Sable Creek Watershed, local watershed-based planning efforts, as well as other helpful information. It is easy-to-use and information is only fingertips away.

Watershed based planning goes beyond municipal or county jurisdictions, to think about the watershed as a whole. It encourages all watershed stakeholders to think and act in ways that benefit the watershed, achieving a cohesive and positive cumulative impact. We hope providing information electronically leads to greater collaboration among all watershed stakeholders.

About the Aux Sable Creek Watershed

The Aux Sable Creek watershed is a sub-watershed of the Upper Illinois River watershed in northeastern Illinois. A total of 96.63 stream miles comprise the Aux Sable Creek watershed. It drains 119,911.14 acres (187.36 square miles) of gently rolling land in Kendall, Grundy and Will Counties. It drains into the Illinois River northeast of Morris, Illinois.

The population in the watershed has more than doubled in the past ten years. 2000 Census data indicated the watershed was home to 14,500 people. 1990 estimates indicated just over 5,600 residents lived in the watershed. The population in the Aux Sable Creek watershed is expanding, through the development of municipalities including Channahon, Joliet, Minooka, Morris, Oswego, Plainfield, Shorewood, and Yorkville as well as some unincorporated areas.